Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom by Stephen Sewell Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Animal Kingdom by Stephen Sewell Read Free Book Online
Authors: Stephen Sewell
lives through us. There is something in us that is not us or ours alone , she would sometimes try to tell them, but it is what makes us who we are . That was the wisdom they needed to learn.
    But they never listened, or thought she was just drunk and out of it, but she wasn’t the one drunk or out of it; they were. That’s why they were beside themselves, unable to understand what was happening, the way they were now.
    Craig was distraught, spastic. He hadn’t really been that close to Baz, but something was going off in him that she couldn’t even guess at.
    â€˜It’s okay to cry, honey,’ Smurf reassured in the soothing voice she found for her sons when they needed comforting. ‘Honey, come here.’
    She knew he was scared, because death is frightening if all you can think of is yourself, and sadly that was all Craig was able to do at his present level of spiritual development. True, he’d asked about Cath, but Smurf knew he was thinking about himself as he wept, about his own death that would inevitably come, swift and black, just as it comes to all of us, and that filled him with nothing but horror.
    â€˜Come here, honey,’ Smurf repeated, trying to calm him down.
    But Craig didn’t want to go to her. Craig didn’t want to be comforted. ‘Fucking dogs!’ he yelled impotently at the phantom police he felt closing in on his and all their lives. Why couldn’t they just leave them all alone? The terrible police murderers waiting in the shadows for them all. He wanted to punch something hard, hurt it, tear the world apart and then do it all over again till the fuckers were dead. But the fuckers would never die; they’d always be there, waiting, because that’s the world as it is.
    â€˜You’ve got to think positive,’ she soothed, ‘positive. That’s what Baz would have wanted, because everyone’s got to move on.’
    But Craig didn’t feel positive. Not one part of him.
    He was acting like the kid he was, filled with grief and fury at the pain he didn’t comprehend. Screaming, spluttering, stumbling out across the hall into the backyard, past the cowering, whimpering dog, with Smurf after him, trying to calm him. Grabbing at the clothes rack, he threw it uselessly against the tree, chucking clothes everywhere.
    Smurf knew her son, and knew how to handle him. ‘Come on, baby, calm down, come here.’
    J had never seen anything like it, not grief like this, and didn’t even understand it, any of it. Not the news of Baz’s death, not his own feelings of emptiness and numbness, the same numbness he’d felt at his mother’s death. He wasn’t even sure if he really cared about anyone, he just felt so dead inside. Maybe he didn’t. Or maybe the pain was something he had to lock away and forget for a while before it blew him apart the same way it was blowing Craig apart.
    Was this it? Was this what life meant? His life, their lives? Something you could laugh about as you ground it beneath your shoe? Was all the rest of it—all the talk about values and happiness—just a lie to cover up the fact that the coppers could just walk up and shoot anyone they wanted through the head because no-one was going to stop them, because they had a uniform and a badge and that gave them the right to do whatever they wanted? And then lie about it, and say he had a gun and the shot was in self-defence?
    Was this the truth? That no-one’s ever really safe, that all you can ever hope to be is so insignificant that it never occurs to anyone to actually kill you? Was that what it was like to live in this place?
    If Craig was showing it, J was turning it inside, where it could do even more damage. He didn’t know why it had happened or why it was happening to them, but he knew it wasn’t right.
    Pope was different: quiet, still, deathly. Carefully pouring himself a glass of water, he stared straight ahead

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